by Megan Alban
No. He should go to Paloma and try to explain things to his buyer. Maybe the guy wouldn’t be sore about it. Maybe he’d even have another job for him so he could get Aphrodite back in order. He did still have a couple of days to reach Paloma, though. Might as well take it slow to give his knee a bit of a break. He thought he’d seen some berries just up the trail the trail. It wouldn’t hurt to go back just for that. He’d head right on back to Paloma after a snack.
Mind made up, Arron headed back up the trail, retracing his steps toward Paige’s claim. He passed where he’d seen the berries, but he kept climbing, his knee starting to bother him already. Still, he kept walking, not letting himself think enough to realize he’d made up his mind to go back.
Just after he crossed back into Paige’s claim, he heard something in the woods, a crashing sound and then a scream, high and feminine.
“Shit, Paige,” he gasped and, without a thought to his aching knee, took off running toward the sound.
When he approached, he could see Paige held between three men who must be MagnorCo thugs. One of them was holding a blaster on her. The other two slowly moved closer, as if they were not sure she wasn’t going to strike like a viper. Arron didn’t have much time to plan out his moves, but he bet everything on them being too focused on Paige to see him coming. Sprinting toward the melee, he leapt at the man with the blaster, knocking straight into his back, Arron plucked the blaster from his fingers as they fell. He spun as they landed and rose to his feet in a smooth movement, firing the blaster at first one then the other of Paige’s assailants. He was aiming to frighten, not kill, and they took the hint, sprinting away from Paige, clearly unprepared for anyone to come to her rescue.
Arron turned the blaster on its erstwhile owner. “Walk away right now and don’t come back. Got it?”
The man didn’t answer, but his eyes flicked to Arron’s knee, the bandage clear over the outside of his jeans, then to Arron’s side, where he was sure he was bleeding through the fabric of his shirt. Arron was incredulous. This guy couldn’t possibly be considering racing a blaster. While Arron was still pondering this, the man made his move, his foot darting out to catch Arron’s knee. Arron jumped back quickly, but he still caught a glancing blow, enough to send pain shooting up his leg and knock him from his feet. Paige screamed and ran, and the thug grabbed his blaster from the ground and brought it down hard onto Arron’s temple.
…
Paige paced back and forth between the trees, ignoring the snap and creak of cones and branches on the forest floor. What the hell was she going to do? She had to go after him. She had to. MagnorCo would do anything to get to her, and she couldn’t let Arron get killed because of it. Without thinking any further Paige handed her bag to Serge. “You guys go back to camp, get a message to dad that we’re in trouble and need his help. Tell him to come home, that we need him. Go now!”
She ran down the path that the MagnorCo thugs had gone. She knew this land like no one else. She’d walked it over and over from one end of the claim to the other. She had explored every stream, every tree. There’s no way they could outsmart her on her land.
Walking the land had taught her tracking. She paid attention to footprints in the dirt, to the changes in the trees. She followed them close, making sure to step where she wouldn’t make too much noise, finding their footprints and following that very path. It didn’t take long for her to realize that they were leading her to the edge of the claim. They knew she would come for Arron. They were trying to lure her off the claim. “Oh, there’s no way in hell!” she breathed.
She ran up a little closer down the trail until she could hear the MagnorCo creepers sniping at each other. Arron seemed to still be out cold and being held by the guy who had knocked him out. She moved up trail just inside the tree line. She needed a way to get their immediate attention and coax them into chasing her before she left the claim. Silently, she cursed her decision to send her bag back with Serge. It meant that she moved faster, sure, but it also meant she had fewer makeshift weapons at her disposal. A quick glance around her, however, brought her attention to a thick branch, at least as wide around as her forearm and just long enough to work for a club. Hefting it in her hand, she gave it a roll to test its weight and then she was off, sprinting silently after the goons and timing her run to catch the last of them just as he was cresting a ridge. She leapt after him, swinging the club with an animalistic yell. He turned in surprise, but she still caught him on the side of his face and he dropped to his knees.
The other two turned at her shout as well, and the one not carrying Arron unholstered his blaster and leveled it straight at her.
“Don’t shoot her!” yelled his companion. “We need her alive in case her partner gives us trouble.” He dropped Arron none too carefully, and Paige gave them a manic grin. She had the only information she needed just now. They wouldn’t shoot.
Pivoting on her heel, she launched herself off her fallen assailant and took off running to the north of the path. She heard both thundering sets of feet coming after her and prayed she’d knocked the third one out long enough for her plan to work. She ran not quite as fast as she could but quickly enough to keep her pursuers far enough away that they could hear but not see her. This would only work if they kept up but she kept her distance.
It wasn’t much farther, but her legs were already beginning to burn from exertion by the time she skidded to turn down the narrow ditch. She ran straight for the cave at the bottom, but just before she reached it, she jumped, leaping up to the top of the cave and rolling to the side, tucking her body into a small nook that would shield her from sight.
“This way!” yelled one of the men, and Paige was pleased to hear him wheezing as he spoke. The both turned and thundered into the ditch, not hesitating at all as they ran into the cave.
Now was the moment of truth. She’d done all she could to help her plan succeed. She only had to wait and see how it turned out.
The moments seemed to stretch themselves into hours, and she heard nothing from the cave, only the beating of her heart, unnaturally loud in the silence of the afternoon. Then she heard what she had been hoping for. First there was a shout, then the ping of a blaster, echoing through the mouth of the cave. There was the sound of running feet and then the sound Paige had been hoping for the first time in her life: the tick-tick-tick of long, pointed legs clattering on rock and packed earth.
The next sound she heard chilled her blood, making her draw her limbs in tighter. It was a hissing sound, sharp and acidic. It took her too long to realize it was the reuzespins vocalizing. A piercing shriek cut through the hissing, and Paige at first thought it was more of the spider-like voices, but it soon became clear it was one of the men. He must have been caught. There were more blaster shots, and Paige saw the man who’d taken Arron down tumbling from the cave, running too fast to keep his balance. A moment later, three reuzespins clattered out after him, and Paige was relieved to see them turn left at the top of the ditch. She waited a minute or two longer, until she could no longer hear the hissing, and then pulled herself from her hiding place to rush back to Arron. She couldn’t bring herself to look in the mouth of the cave as she passed, afraid of what she might see inside.
She ran as fast as she could, flying down the path wildly and falling twice in her haste to get to Arron before the thug she had hit came to. She wasn’t really sure just how hard she hit him, but since he hadn’t shown up, she thought he must still be knocked out. When she came upon Arron she saw the man still passed out on the ground. She went over to him. He was breathing. She searched his pockets and found a knife, a little bit of credit, and two pair of braces. She put one pair of braces around his arms, pulled behind his back and the other pair around his ankles. She pocketed the knife and credit, and pulled out her pocket laser to rewire the braces so that they only released with her thumb print. It was an easy enough rework.
Then she turned all of her attention to Arron. She wanted to get them out of t
here quickly. Even though this one was detained in braces and the others were taken care of by the reuzespins, she wasn’t sure the MagnorCo folks wouldn’t want to know where their thugs were and come looking for them. Besides she and Arron were pretty banged up. She bent down next to him and got on her knees. She wanted to assess his head wound where the man had hit him with the blaster. It wasn’t bleeding, but it was a good hit. She put a hesitant hand soft on his cheek and stroked down. “Arron. Arron. It’s me, Paige. Arron, come on. We need to get back to camp. It’s not safe here.”
…
Arron woke to gentle hands on his cheek, his head groggy and pounding. “Paige?”
“Yeah. It’s me. Come on, we have to get to camp.”
“Paige? Where are the men?”
“There’s one, cuffed over by that tree. The others had a face to face meeting with the reuzespins.”
“Oh, Darkness!” Arron’s eyes widened.
“Come on, it’s coming on nightfall.”
“Okay. Help me up?”
She reached out a hand to him. He took it and got up swiftly as he could. They started down the path toward camp. Every step Arron took juddered through his frame, but after a few steps, Paige reached over to take his arm, draping it around her shoulder so he could lean on her a little. He grimaced a smile at her and together they limped their way back to her domed tent.
The bots were waiting when they arrived, two of them, at least. Paige helped him onto the bottom bunk and then turned her attention to the little machines. “Sergio?”
The big one--Serge, maybe?--made a series of beeps that, even to Arron, sounded mournful. “What? No,” Paige whispered. The pain in her voice made Arron want to go to her, but when he tried to sit up, he groaned with his own pain, and Paige turned to him. “Lie down!” she insisted, leaving him feeling like a scolded puppy. He obeyed, but reached for her shoulder when she came to him.
“What happened?”
“It’s nothing,” she said, wrinkling her nose and sniffing a little, her eyes blinking quickly. “Let’s see how badly you’re banged up.”
“It’s not nothing, honey,” he answered, his thumb leaving a dark streak that was equal parts blood and dirt as it met the tear sliding down her cheek.
“Well, we’ve got more important things to think of right now.” She straightened her shoulders as she helped him out of his shirt.
“No shame in mourning a fallen comrade,” Arron said quietly, though he lay back to let her work.
“He’s just a robot,” Paige argued, though her voice broke a little and another tear escaped.
“He was a friend. Hell, he was my friend before you were.”
The joke had its intended effect. Paige smiled a little, her deft fingers opening the medkit she kept under the bunk and quickly finding antiseptic and gauze. “Are we friends now?”
“Don’t reckon you’d risk a blaster for a stranger.”
“I might,” Paige said. “If it was the right stranger.” Her words only had a moment to bloom warmth in his chest before he was hissing at the sting of antiseptic where she daubed it into a nasty cut on his side.
“You’re a sneaky little cheat,” he chided, grinning.
“Thought you’d take it easier if you were distracted,” she said. “Don’t want you bawling like a baby.”
“I don’t think you’d ever make me cry, Paige,” Arron murmured as she cleaned his hand, checking it for cuts. Once his fingers were clean, he reached up again to wipe away the mark from her cheek. He could feel her skin heating under his touch.
She ducked her head and didn’t say anything more until she’d finished with his torso, bandaging the one serious cut and leaving the rest to heal in the air. “How’s your knee?” she finally asked, and Arron’s stomach trembled under her touch as she moved to undo his trousers. He could feel his cock swelling as he watched her unbutton his pants and pull them down past his knit shorts over his knees and off his body. Her fingers slid down his hips and the outsides of his legs and left a trail of longing in their wake.
“Why don’t we tend to you, too?” He sat up slowly, nodded his head forward, “you’re bleeding.”
“No, I’m…” She started to say she wasn’t, but there was blood coming through her shirt. She had cut her shoulder. “It’s just a scratch,” she assured him, “I’m fine. You’re much more banged up than I am.” But his hands were coming to the hem of her shirt. She watched his fingers grab hold and pull up. Her arms went instinctively above her head. And in one swift movement Arron was faced with more of her skin than he’d seen, though she’d seen all of his. As he tossed the shirt aside, the whole time holding her eyes with his gaze, she said, “I guess I should launder it.”
“Later,” Arron murmured, taking the opportunity to pull the bottle of antiseptic from her fingers and apply some to her cut. She winced a little, hissing softly at the sting, but she took it well, and she had Arron’s admiration for that. She had much more than his admiration for the way her gaze met his, blue eyes darkening with desire. He let his fingers run gently over her skin as he applied the bandage.
“There,” he said softly when he’d finished, “All done.” And then, acting on a strange instinct, he bent forward to press his lips to her shoulder, just above the cut. She sucked in a breath, her head tilting back slightly, and that was enough invitation for Arron, who leaned in further, the scruff of his beard catching on her skin until his lips had found their way to the corner of her jaw, kissing her there as well.
“We should,” she murmured, even as her hands slide up his arms to grip his shoulders. “I mean… your knee.”
He wanted to tell her to sod his knee, but he could still feel the twinge of pain there even through his desire, and he didn’t want anything distracting him from her just now.
“All right,” he said, letting his lips graze her ear. “Fix me up.” He leaned back again, this time not bothering to hide the way his erection tented the front of his shorts. She could stop him anytime, and he knew she was aware of that.
“Just your knee,” she protested softly, leaning back to carefully tug his jeans off. “For now.”
That was just as much hope as he needed, and he shifted as well as he could to help her with the task. He could see, as the cloth was pulled away, that his knee was swelling something fierce, purple with bruises. She carefully cleaned away the dirt and blood that had soaked through his jeans. Her fingers were cool again, and though his bruises were tender, each touch sent a shiver of desire through him that throbbed in his dick.
Even when she prodded his knee to test its soundness, his erection didn’t flag. Not when her face was that close to it, those tantalizing lips inches away, her breath puffing across the tip like she didn’t even know how crazy she was driving him.
“I don’t think it’s broken,” she said after a moment, finally looking up, meeting his gaze, her pupils blown, her cheeks pink.
“That’s a mercy,” he answered in a husky voice.
“Just let me wrap it,” she offered. “I think it’s strained.”
“Only if you’re quick. Not sure how much longer I can look at your lips and not be kissing them.” Arron was surprised by his own words, as much at having voiced the sentiment as feeling it in the first place. Paige’s breath caught, and she swallowed, nodding, her hands moving quickly through the medkit to find a wrap for his knee. She wound it quick and tight, like someone used to patching people up. It made him think briefly of her partner, and he couldn’t stop himself asking, “You sure your partner won’t mind?”
“If he does, it’s none of his business,” she said firmly, pinning the wrap in place. It wasn’t quite the reassurance Arron was looking for, but before he could even think of protesting, she was sliding up his body, careful of his knee, and straddling his hips. It took only the space of a breath for him to push up to meet her, hand curling around the back of her neck as their lips finally touched. She met the kiss fiercely, her hands coming up to frame his face a
s she opened for him, met her tongue with his, let him taste and play.
When his hands sneaked their way down her back to the hem of her tank, he paused, wanting to be sure she wasn’t wanting to stop. He pulled back to look at her, and she didn’t look away as she put her hands over his, taking the shirt from his fingers and pulling it up over her head. She held herself straight and stiff, as if waiting for him to pronounce judgment.
For a moment, he could say nothing, his breath stuck in his throat. He leaned back on his elbows just to get a better look at her. She was small, he’d known that already, her breasts hardly enough to fill his palm, but curving tantalizingly above her ribs. Her body was lithe, strong, a testament to the life she lived. There were scars too, and when Arron raised his hand, his fingers moved straight to them, tracing their lines like he was reading braille. She watched his face as he touched her, and he didn’t have to wonder what she saw there. It had to be awe.
She gave a little shudder when his hand slid up to her breast, letting it rest in his palm a moment before he leaned up to press a kiss just between them. “Beautiful,” he murmured into her skin, feeling his breath hot against her. His lips slid to her breast then, finding a nipple and sucking, gently at first, then pulling it up in his teeth just to hear her reaction. She didn’t disappoint. Her back arched toward him, and his hips moved in response, the hard length of his cock pressing against the curve of her ass, still covered completely.
“Feeling a little underdressed here, honey,” he said, and she laughed for him, that bright, unexpected sound that sent a little flutter through his heart.
“Guess you better get to work then, mister,” she quipped, though she leaned back, only as far as his grip on her waist would allow, and unfastened her belt. He watched in a fevered anticipation, and this time she didn’t tease. Her hands were quick and sure as they opened her jeans next, and she undulated her body to slip them from her frame, leaving them both only covered by thin, cotton shorts.